


Challenge the Default

by elliptical



Category: Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Friendship, Lady Midnight Spoilers, M/M, Post Lady Midnight, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Processing Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6265393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm not normal," Ty told him a month later, as the pair of them tried to catch frogs outside.  He said it with the casual air of someone discussing the weather, or pointing out that a shoelace was untied.</p><p>Kit blinked.  "Obviously," he said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Challenge the Default

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe one line in a book could make me ship a pairing that's probably never going to happen  
> anyway, i would die for ty blackthorn
> 
> this is my first fic in this fandom (or any shadowhunter-related fandom). inspired because i would die for ty blackthorn

Nothing in the world had ever been as relieving as Ty's gentle confirmation that there was, in fact, a computer at the Institute.

Kit's head had yet to stop spinning. His father dead, his identity uprooted, the discovery of the blood of his enemies in his veins... it was enough to cause a few well-deserved teenage angst sessions. All this before even beginning to tack on the way he'd been torn from the mundie world, told that he was now a Shadowhunter, and surrounded by people who seemed to expect great things from him. Well, "great" for a certain value of the word. They expected him to be a warrior, even if there wasn't some deep prophecy about him being the best warrior anyone had ever seen, which was more than enough pressure.

All he'd done was defend himself, and now this?

Sure, he'd had the Sight all his life. But the Nephilim had a strange, backwards societal way of going about things. Kit was starting to believe he'd never see a computer or phone again. When Ty followed the computer announcement with a hasty mumble about "technically contraband", some of the relief washed away, and he let out an exaggerated groan.

Still, it was enough to coax him from his room. The Nephilim world had never been his own. His place had been with the Downworlders or unsighted mundanes. Technology was a way to cling to a little piece of home, a way of proving that he wouldn't lose himself in this place of warriors and codes and laws.

"I like computers too," Ty said as Kit settled in the computer chair. "I like finding out how they work, and building them. I can never get my head properly around all of the numbers, though."

"Mmm," Kit said.

"Anyway, I'll... leave you alone. I'm glad you came outside. Tell me if you need anything."

Kit had no intention of asking Ty for anything, not the least reason being that Ty had held a knife to his throat not long before everything else happened. Even if it was "just business," it was enough to make him wary around the guy, beautiful though he may be.

Things change easily enough, though.

\---

Kit would not have expected his first real friend in the Institute to be a boy named Tiberius Blackthorn. Nobody in their right mind would name a child Tiberius. Shadowhunters were all just as moronic as he'd been led to believe. The imaginary crowd in his mind gasped with shock and horror.

But Ty called him Kit instead of Christopher, and backed away when Kit told him to, and stayed when he was wanted. He didn't bother trying to reach out like a parent, or worm his way in with faux friendliness, or dig his way under Kit's defenses with pointed questions about his emotional state. Kit didn't want to talk about his father, so they didn't. Kit didn't want to talk about his future as a Shadowhunter, so they didn't. Kit didn't want to talk about his family, or legacy, or the fact that life as he knew it was over forever, so they didn't.

Ty was only ever Ty. Open, honest Ty. Kit wasn't sure Ty was capable of ulterior motives - if he had them, he buried them so deeply that Kit didn't have an inkling of what they were.

"Why do you do that?" he asked one day when, sitting beside him at the computer, Ty pulled a length of silvery chain out of his pocket and began twisting it around his fingers.

"Do what?"

Kit gestured at the chain with a shrug.

"Oh." Ty looped the cord over his wrist. "It helps me focus. Having something in my hands, I mean. And I like the texture."

"Huh." Kit considered that for a moment. "Cool. Can I try?"

Ty hesitated.

"You don't have to or nothin'. But I promise I won't break it. Dunno if I could, anyway. It looks strong."

"Just give it back when you're finished."

Kit took the length of chain between his fingers, running the pad of his thumb over it. The metal was smooth and cool, the interlocking links creating pleasant ripples. He twisted it around his fingers the same way Ty did, but whatever pleasure and grounding Ty found in the sensation was lost on him. After a few seconds, he handed it back.

"I don't get it," he said.

To his surprise, Ty looked pleased rather than offended. "I don't get a lot of things other people get," he said. "Now I have a secret code of my own."

Kit laughed for the first time he could remember since his father's death. The sound pulled out of him as easily as breathing, startling him. He'd forgotten what it felt like to laugh. "Do you have other things like this? To help you focus?"

"Yes. Julian made them for me when I was younger. I've never really stopped using them."

"Well, then you have a lot of secret codes."

Ty fiddled with the chain for a few more moments, then wrapped it into a tight coil and dropped it back in his pocket, smiling like he'd learned something exciting. "I guess I do."

\---

It was a month and a half into Kit's grudging stay at the Institute when he finally talked about his father, while laying on the floor in Ty's strangely-organized bedroom. His own room was too bare and boring, and there were only so many Internet memes to catch up on in a day. And he had yet to forge meaningful relationships with the others here, who looked at him with everything from pity to disdain, so sequestered in Ty's room it was.

"My dad wasn't a good guy," he said. "Morally speaking and all. But he protected his own."

"I believe you."

"I don't think anyone was upset that he died. No one else cares that he's gone." Kit rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin up with his hands. There was no need to talk about the nightmares that propelled him out of bed most nights, no need to talk about how the scattered remnants of his father's body were painted on the backs of his eyelids. Nightmares were a dime a dozen in the Institute. Everyone else had enough without him complaining of his own.

"No one cares that he's gone but me," Kit said. "Everyone else just thinks it sucks that I saw my dad die. Which it definitely did, don't get me wrong, but that's not the point."

Ty was sitting crosslegged in his bed, but he folded his hands as he considered this. "I think," he said finally, "that's because you knew a different Johnny Rook than anyone else did. You knew the good parts of him. It's hard for other people to grieve the parts of him they didn't know."

"Hard for people to grieve him at all," Kit grumbled. "Johnny Rook the crook. Like he got what was coming to him. All the rest of you are upset over dead heroes and I don't even get to feel like what I saw was real, 'cause no one else cares."

"That's not true," Ty said sharply. "What you saw was real."

"I know it was. But it feels like... like it doesn't matter so much. Like it would matter more if he was someone else."

"You don't have to... feel the same things as other people, for those things to be real." There was an edge of something else in Ty's voice, something that made Kit think this wasn't just about his father. For a few moments, Ty was quiet, and then he continued.

"You know what happened with Malcolm. Malcolm was my friend. My good friend. I never thought he wasn't being honest because... because I had no reason to. And because I can't - I can't see that in people like other people can. Dishonesty. And people who know that can take advantage of me. Malcolm did. I didn't understand how he could lie so completely, be one person one moment and another the next. And everyone else seems to have moved on from that. They're sad they lost a friend, but they just accept that betrayals happen and keep going. But it's not like that for me. It's like the whole world is different now, because if Malcolm was lying then how do I know Julian isn't, or Emma, or Cristina, or even Livvy? If I couldn't tell with Malcolm, how can I tell with anyone else? How can I trust them? How can I trust myself?"

Kit listened in quiet silence, but when Ty stopped speaking he found that he didn't have words to say. Someone more eloquent might. Julian was the kind of person who could have reassured Ty, but Kit...

"I'm sorry," Ty added. "I had a point I forgot to get to. The point was, I'm more upset about Malcolm than everyone else seems to be. Everyone gets upset about different things for different reasons. You're allowed to grieve your father. He was your father, even if he wasn't a good man. He was your family. You loved him."

Kit paused, turning the words over in his mind. Then he climbed onto the mattress and splayed out on the sheets. He was dry-faced, but when Ty laid beside him and gently nudged his shoulder, he felt ready to cry for the first time in six weeks.

\---

"I'm not normal," Ty told him a month later, as the pair of them tried to catch frogs outside. He said it with the casual air of someone discussing the weather, or pointing out that a shoelace was untied.

Kit blinked. "Obviously," he said.

"I just thought you should know, in case you hadn't noticed yet. Or if you thought I didn't know. I do know."

"The whole idea of 'normal' is stupid to begin with." Kit dislodged a rock in the stream, swirling mud around with his fingertips, much more interested in the patterns than in finding any animals. "I mean, when people say 'normal', what they mean is 'comfortable'. They just want to stay with what they're comfortable with. Their defaults."

"Hmm," Ty said. "That's a good way to put it. Julian has always accepted that I'm different. He never tried to make me pretend to be anything else. My father wanted to make me act like everyone else, but that... didn't go well."

"No one's ever thought I'm normal. Mundies thought there was something wrong with me because I had the Sight. Downworlders thought there was something wrong with me because I was a mundie. Shadowhunters think there's something wrong with me because I don't know jack about them."

Ty was puzzled. "Who's Jack?"

"It's an expression." Kit had taught Ty more than a few less-than-polite expressions, mostly by accident. "Anyway, the point is, normal's for losers. It's boring. If your life is all normal, where's the excitement? Where's the adventure? How are you gonna do anything unpredictable?"

Ty smiled. "I think Julian forgets that I'm not a child, sometimes," he said softly. "He doesn't mean to. He just thinks that because I play with toys and chase frogs, I'm still young and should be sheltered. But I don't need to be hidden. I know I'm different. I know my thoughts are different. I know it will be an uphill battle to make the Clave understand."

He had stopped searching the riverbank, instead sitting down and pulling out his chain. "There is... a lot of beauty in things that aren't considered normal. Mark understands that. Mark and I understand each other a lot, especially when he slips back into faerie speak. Sometimes we don't understand each other at all, but... I think Julian is afraid that I'll think there is something wrong with me, if I acknowledge that I'm different. But I don't think there's anything wrong with me. It's the Clave that's wrong."

Kit frowned. "And you still want to study with them?"

"More than anything."

"So how's that gonna work?"

"I'm not sure. I'm planning." Ty smiled at him, not quite making eye contact, his way of signifying that the expression was for Kit without causing himself discomfort. "Julian will help me once he understands how serious I am. And in the meantime, I'm glad to have you to chase frogs with."

"I'm glad to have you too," Kit said. "I think... I think you're the best friend I've got right now."

Ty nodded, his expression melting back to seriousness. "And you're family. If you want to be."

"Well, that depends. If I'm family then do I have to put up with Julian mothering me?"

"I think you would have to ask him about that."

Kit gently touched the back of Ty's hand. "Thank you," he said, "for everything."

Ty nudged his head against Kit's shoulder, so reminiscent of a cat that it made him want to laugh again. "All right," he said, "but you should really wait to thank me until after we catch a frog."


End file.
